the screen-the small screen, at that-is capturing its theatricality: In the theatre, there are times when two scenes are played simultaneously, and when a character from one scene walks into another on the other side of the stage. This presents Nichols with a kind of physics problem; what was represented in space now has to be represented in time, with one scene following another. Nichols wisely avoids using a split screen; what he does is move back and forth between scenes, and to a great extent this technique works, al- though occasionally the cuts are so quick that you're forced to pay almost too much attention to the TV screen, in a way that is itself a distraction-you're too aware of trying to keep track of who's where, who's talking to whom, and how the scenes are connected. Any- one who makes the effort to transfer a play to TV runs the risk of focussing excessively on plot and dialogue and of failing to catch the elusive -- nonverbal elements in his / butterfly net. (This is what happened with the TV ver- sion of "Wit," for which Nichols and Emma Thomp- son, who starred, wrote the screenplay: Most of the de- liberately self-conscious stage devices, which were integral to the pla and necessary to give full dimension to the main character, were gone, and the TV version became largely a story about an inter- esting woman dying of can- cer.) There is a certain kind of magic in the theatre that can't be replicated in any other form, and it doesn't depend on the audi- ence's not seeing how it's done; it's the fact that you often can see how it's done- whether it's an actor undergoing a trans- formation in front of you or a set design or a lighting effect-that makes you mar- vel. Kushner acknowledges this in his stage notes. Such moments, he says, "are to be fully realized, as bits of wonderful theatrical illusion-which means it's O.K. if the wires show, and maybe it's good that they do, but the magic showd at the same time be thorougWyamazing." But the camera has its own advan- tages, and the opening credits of ' gels" offer an astonishing effect, which beau- ON TELEVI510N AMER.ICA, LOST AND FOUND Mike Nichols and an all-star cast tackle Tony Kushner's masterwork BY NANCY FRANKLIN T here is wide agreement, and no com- pelling counterargument, that Tony Kushner's ' gels in America" is the most important play of the last decade. A fear- less, ambitious work, it took in, and took on, the Reagan years (it is set in 1985 and 1986), American history; the AIDS plague, sexuality, love, death, religion, and the Il?-eaning of community. In its rigor, it made no distinction between the personal and the political, but it was open-minded and openhearted, epic not just in its intent but in its effect on audiences-people were swept in, swept away, and changed by it, their armor cracked. Those who weren't so affected still more than likely walked away feeling that the chord Kushner had struck, consisting of notes \ of anger, instruction, intel- ligence, mysticism, and, not "- least, humor, wowd linger in their heads for a long time. Although it has been ten years since ' gels" was pro- duced in New York, Kushner's play hasn't become dated; the offstage, real-life world has turned many times since 1993, but there are enough rough equivalents to the issues the play raises that its ironies still seem sharp and its over-all power-its harshness, its hard-won optimism-is undiminished. ' gels" has now been made into an HBO film, and at least one of the chal- lenges of transferring Kushner's work from the stage to the screen is obvious: the two plays that make up ' gels"-"Mil- lenruum Approaches" and "Perestroika"- total more than six hours. (In theatres, they are performed on separate nights o and also sometimes together, as a one- day marathon, with a meal break in be- B tween.) In the mid-nineties, RobertAlt- co man planned to direct a film version; he and Kushner attempted to boil the play down to two or three hours. Then an- other director got involved and Kushner re-expanded the screenplay: Ultimatel Mike Nichols signed on as director and executive producer (his co-executive pro- ducer, Cary Brokaw, teamed with him on the HBO version of Margaret Edson's play "Wit," two years ago), and the reswt is 7 7) ;/ /.-/ (1 , ^'" \\\ \ ----------- When worlds collide: Thompson and Kirk in ':Angels in America. " a six-hour TV movie-albeit a TV movie with a feature-film budget of sixty mil- lion dollars. ("Millennium Approaches" will air on Sunday, December 7th, and "Perestroika" the following Sunda and HBO will repeat both parts frequently in subsequent weeks.) Kushner has cut little from the original script and has maIn- tained the work's general shape, although the eight acts, along with an epilogue at the end of "Perestroika," have been con- figured into six "chapters," and the play's subtitle, "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," has been eliminated. Aside from length, the greatest diffi- cwty in adapting ' gels in America" for THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 8, 2003 125